The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a RevolutionBarely fifty years ago a computer was a gargantuan, vastly expensive thing that only a handful of scientists had ever seen. The world’s brightest engineers were stymied in their quest to make these machines small and affordable until the solution finally came from two ingenious young Americans. Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce hit upon the stunning discovery that would make possible the silicon microchip, a work that would ultimately earn Kilby the Nobel Prize for physics in 2000. In this completely revised and updated edition of The Chip, T.R. Reid tells the gripping adventure story of their invention and of its growth into a global information industry. This is the story of how the digital age began. |
Contents
| 3 | |
The Will to Think | 24 |
A Nonobvious Solution | 62 |
Leap of Insight | 81 |
Kilby v Noyce | 96 |
The Real Miracle | 118 |
Blasting Off | 144 |
The Implosion | 164 |
Other editions - View all
The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution T.R. Reid Limited preview - 2001 |
Common terms and phrases
American atom basic Bell Labs binary Bob Noyce Boole Brattain Busicom called capacitors circuitry components control unit corporate cuit current flowing Dallas Deming devices DIM-I diode Edison Effect elec electric electronics engineers Fairchild filament Fleming Gordon Moore Haggerty human Ibid important integrated circuit Intel invention inventor J. J. Thomson Jack Kilby Japan Japanese keyboard Kilby's later light bulb logic gates look machine manufacturing mathematical memory chips ments microchip Microelectronics microprocessor million monolithic idea N-type Nobel Prize Noyce's numbers operations P-N junction patent application physicist physics problem pulses puter radio resistors Robert Noyce scientists screen Semiconductor Industry Shannon Shockley signal Silicon Valley slide rule solve switch technical television Texas Instruments thing Thomson tion took transistor tronic Turing turn tyranny of numbers U.S. firms vacuum tube Willis Adcock wires wrote